At the close of World War II, the Navy was
left with several types of aircraft that were doing duty in the patrol,
reconnaissance and surveillance roles. The PV-1 Ventura and PV-2
Harpoon were important mainstays of the war. Their forward firing
cannons and their relatively short endurance made them more suitable in
attack and escort roles than for long-range patrols. These aircraft did
prove valuable in an ASW role in the North Atlantic toward the end of
the war, and had success in ASW operations in the Western Atlantic
close to shore. The Navy also had longer range aircraft in its
inventory, but each had its own shortcomings. The PBY and PBM
seaplanes did valiant service during the war. Both had longer
range than the PV-1 and PV-2, but were also slower and more vulnerable
to enemy attack.

The Navy tried to convert some aircraft for patrol
use that had been introduced by the Army Air Forces (AAF)... the
forerunner of the U.S. Air Force. The PBJ Mitchell bomber, a
variant of the B-25, which Doolittle’s Raiders flew from the U.S.S.
Hornet to attack the Japanese mainland, saw some success with the
Marine Corps, but saw little use as a Navy patrol plane. The PB-1
Flying Fortress, a variant of the famous AAF B-17, also saw little use
in patrol operations. The PB4Y Liberator, a variant of the AAF
B-24, saw wider use as a patrol plane and served well in several Navy
patrol squadrons. But, at the end of WWII, the Navy knew that it
needed a new design for a faster, more capable long-range patrol
aircraft.

During World War II, the Army Air Forces proved to
the world that land-based aviation in the form of long-range bombers,
was a strategic necessity for success in wartime. The strategic
bombing role that the AAF undertook in Europe brought Germany and Italy
to its knees, although our losses of AAF crews and aircraft were tragic
and previously unimaginable. From bases in the U.K., the AAF flew
literally thousands of bombing missions per day against strategic Axis
targets in Europe. No one can ever forget the wartime losses of
thousands of our AAF aircraft and brave crews over the span of
WWII. The AAF’s new B-29, which was the fastest and highest
flying bomber of WWII, was noted for delivering the first and only
nuclear weapons used in wartime when it was used to bomb Hiroshima and
Nagasaki.

Soon after the close of WWII, there was a move
underway to make the Army Air Forces a separate military service.
Up to that point, we had a War Department that included the Army and
the Army Air Forces, and we had a Navy Department that included the
Navy and Marine Corps. The AAF was a subsidiary of the Army,
while the Marine Corps was considered a separate branch of the military
under the Secretary of the Navy. The AAF wanted its independence
from the Army and wanted separate-service status similar to the Marine
Corps, but with its own Department and Secretary like the Army and
Navy. There was also an effort by the Army Air Forces to enlarge
its scope of responsibility by attempting to take over the Navy’s and
Marine’s air arm. Those attitudes stemmed from two decades before
when General Billy Mitchell proposed that all military aviation matters
should be the responsibility of a single, independent air force.
The AAF had so proved its worth in WWII that it gained a good deal of
political support for taking control of all U.S. military air resources
including those of the Navy and the Marine Corps. The AAF aspired
to be the U.S. Air Force with ownership and control over all assets
that flew. They would allow the Navy and Marine Corps to use
aircraft carriers, but they wanted the carrier airplanes to be Air
Force airplanes. Some even accused the AAF of wanting control
over the Army’s Howitzers that shot cannon shells into the air.

In 1946, there was a tremendous down-sizing of our
military forces. All of the services were required to reduce
their personnel and equipment to peacetime levels. Ships,
squadrons, and battalions of troops were disestablished. Money to
be spent on defense became scarce, and the services began to compete
for available dollars. There began a “roles and missions”
squabble among the services, with each service staking out its
perceived role in warfare and seeking the funds necessary to support
that role with people and weapons. It soon became clear that a
battle was underway between the Navy and the Army Air Forces to
determine which service should have the role of maritime air
patrol. The AAF was touting its B-29 as the longest range, most
capable aircraft to do that job. They also had a huge behemoth of
an airplane coming into production… the ten-engine B-36, that later
proved to be highly unreliable and that was quickly outmoded. The
Navy was waiting for its new patrol aircraft to come off the production
lines… the P2V Neptune.

Even before the end of the hostilities of WWII, CDR
Thomas D. Davies, experienced in patrol aviation and decorated for
achievement in ASW, was assigned for duty in the Navy’s Bureau of
Aeronautics. In early 1946, CDR Eugene P. Rankin, another patrol
squadron veteran, arrived for duty in BuAer in Washington,
D.C. CDR Davies headed the Patrol Plane Class Desk,
supervising the design and selection of the Navy’s next patrol
aircraft. CDR Rankin was assigned to the Armaments Division,
where he had access and input to the newly designed P2V’s weapons
systems. Both officers, and many other Navy officials in the
Capitol, were intensely aware that the Navy’s role in maritime
surveillance and reconnaissance was considered up for grabs in many
Washington, D.C. circles.

While the P2V was still in the final design stage,
CDR Davies was working with Lockheed to extend the P2V’s long-range
capabilities. At Davies’ request, Lockheed initiated “Operation
Turtle” to investigate ways to extend the range of the P2V. CDR
Davies spoke openly about his desire to use the P2V in an endurance
record-breaking attempt to show that it was just as capable of covering
the world’s oceans as the B-29. CDR Eugene Rankin was the first
to volunteer to participate in such a flight. The conclusions of
the “Operation Turtle” study suggested that a highly modified P2V
Neptune could fly at least 12,000 statute miles.

In June of 1946, P2V-1 aircraft began coming off the
Lockheed Aircraft Corporation’s production line in Burbank,
California. Since the cost of the P2V’s represented a sizeable
portion of the Navy’s peacetime budget, and owing to pressures from the
AAF to take over the role of maritime air operations, the Navy’s Chief
of Naval Operations, Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz sent a memo to
Secretary of the Navy, James V. Forrestal. Nimitz suggested the
following:

“For the purpose of investigating means of
extension of present patrol aircraft ranges,
physiological limitations on patrol plane crew endurance and long-range
navigation by pressure pattern methods, it is
proposed to make a nonstop flight of a P2V-1 aircraft
from Perth, Australia to Washington, D.C. with the
possibility, weather permitting, of extending the
flight to Bermuda.”

Left unsaid in Admiral Nimitz’s memo was the fact that the intended
route would exceed the distance record set the year before in which a
B-29 had flown non-stop from Guam to Washington, D.C… a little over
7500 nautical miles. There were also rumors that the AAF was
planning a more ambitious record-setting flight across the North Pole
from Hawaii to Cairo, Egypt, a trip of some 9,000 nautical miles.
Not coincidentally, the distance from Perth, Australia to Bermuda, via
great circle route, is almost exactly 12,000 miles.

There is no hard evidence to prove it today, but it
is widely believed that CDR Davies drafted the memo that Admiral Nimitz
sent to SECDEF Forrestal, and gained the support of VADM Arthur
Radford, the Deputy Chief of Naval Operations for Air Warfare to push
the project along.